This is the character journal of my character Aeona Tycheweaver, an Oracle who exists at a fraying of the fabric of space-time.

Our third week had less of a breakneck pace, but still exciting. Everyone almost died! But we levelled up!

This morning I saw the most wondrous thing. We have been gifted boarding and meals in The Rusty Dragon Inn. As I sat this morning a puddle of wine trembled on the floor. Its snaking tendrils of liquid retracted, unstaining the floor. As it pulled together, it gathered together cartwheeling shards of glass, mending and gluing together. The world sparkled in this collecting chaos of wine and glass, sucking into a crescendo of gurgling and shattering, becoming one. A pure glass goblet of wine, arcing slowly up towards the lip of the table. It teetered on the edge, as if it hadn’t quite made it, but staggered forward with a celebratory ding! and nestled against the bracer of our dwarf paladin friend.

Let me explain.

A traced thread of time terminates a few weeks ago. It’s where I ended and I began. Where I saw It. Whistling your fingers along this thread - travel, my sister Viktoriya, blood-playful goblins, skeletons, officials, boar, shattered lighthouses, a gypsy man and a Dwarven ranger. Zoran and Bahlek, respectively. Several distant threads converging at Sandpoint. I had lost where my thread of visions had gone - a trick of intercolliding strings at a broken perspective.

Young men of the town would sit with my sister and I, expecting a night of debauchery, and not expecting my exegesis on fractured time. My sister had wryly noticed that we had gone from “those two freak girls” to “The Heroes of Sandpoint”. I was not aware that self-preservation and self-interest was heroic. Well, I did stop that hay barn succumbing to goblin fires by connecting it to its ancient submerged past, but everyone would do that if given the chance.

Our local man, Zoran Teskarova the gypsy, has been counted amongst our heroic troupe. To which he responded by sleeping with the daughter of a local councilman. Two black eyes, a night in jail and a sheep bailout from us sisters, and he re-evaluated his situation. He complained of the violence. He complained of being a “nobody in Sandpoint before, and now I’m a hero!” He can’t see it but I can. He’s been a part of Sandpoint longer than he knows.

The ranger Bahlek follows us around. Sister doesn’t know about a dwarven ranger. “You can’t range under the mountains.” Indeed, I see murky somethings on his soul, but it isn’t the darkness of mines. Or maybe it is. I’m no good at reading these things yet.

A dwarven paladin named Durak Stoneson has joined us, originally to break up a fight between a daughter and her father, but now for “what is right”, concerning the goblins. I can see something between the two dwarves, like a crack in stone under tension. Durak seems more earthy than Bahlek, but sis says that is a terrible joke.

Sister is a curio too. With my condition, I have trouble with the has, has not, will, will not. And all the parallel aextantuus. She seems… darker, now. Not in actions. Like someone who can’t step out of a shadow. She is the sister she always was to me, but different. Always that step away, regardless of how close. I catch her whispering to herself at night. Oh, and she conjures dogs out of thin air. I don’t recall us ever owning a dog, loyal as these ones are.

And little ol’ ribbons, me. If I concentrate and listen, the townsfolk say I’m of two minds. Schizophrenic. The children see me as hope. The men see me as a young woman to be bedded. I’m not two minds. I’m not young. I’m every mind. I’m an old woman. I’m a babe in the womb. I’m the soil into which Nethys the Omniscient One digs his roots. I am mountains ground to sand. Smiles turned to skeletons. I am fireswept plains and drowned cliffs.   I Am Time. 

But I’m not insane. I am not.

I am for hire, apparently. As is the rest of Sandpoint’s heroic band. A woman had complained of their husband being bitten and child missing, no wait, other way around. A goblin had hid in her closet, rounded up by the family dog. The child complained of monsters in the closet, and was bitten for their trouble. The husband had tried to kill it but died trying. He was beyond my help. Tough little bastard he was. Well, not tough enough for an axe in the face. Death is a weird thing. A thread cut short, but so intertwined with others that it cannot dangle.

Having sorted this errand out we were talked at by the local council and their trusted ranger, Shalelu. Goblins of all sorts have taken up residence around Sandpoint, warring and cooperating and sneaking and plotting. As if it wasn’t patently obvious if you stare at the fabric. But, I forget that most people can’t, so humility, Aeona. Kindness.

I see things differently, I know this. It’s tough. Everyone sees a looking glass. I see a hall of them. I have empathy, I do. I spoke up when the father, Lonjiku, of our innkeeper, Amiko, scolded her and beat her around. I encouraged our motley band to find her when she went missing near the glassworks. When we found her murderous brother Tsuto commanding a gang of goblins, I ran into the fray. Our dwarf paladin would have died if it wasn’t for me time-stitching his blood back in. I kept people alive, including my dear sister. I am in under my head at the calmest of times, so yelling celestial at new friends as arrows pierce my chest is a new level of difficulty entirely.

We found Amiko and a hidden crypt of sorts below the glassworks. He father had been killed by the goblins (molten glass poured on the man of all things! A vicious end for a vicious man) We explored the hidden catacombs. A blur of violence and creeping through darkened tunnels. A mischievous quaasit sending us to sleep as dogs tore each other apart and the paladin pummeled gaunt figures of tendons and hate born from demon blood. Horrifying experimental zombies.

The Sandpoint Few began as wanderers. Scattered broken pieces. We were drawn into the wine festival, the goblin raid, the glassworks, the crypt… Broken pieces of glass cartwheeling, merging as one in a cacophony of violence. We are now as one. Arcing towards some higher destiny (my prophecy?) We were close to losing our grips on our lives, but now we are settled, solid.

We are the Sandpoint heroes and we’ve got a lot of work to do.